Gmail Up

This weekend brought a good news with my gmail account finally working !!

It feels good to get that data back!! But I am quite surprised that there occurred such a serious bug within gmail that kept my account down for almost nearly a month!! I feel good that they looked into it and finally resolved it out but they asked me all sort of weird questions to get this thing up.

I was a big proponent of keeping all data online and just accessing it via the browser but this one situation is seriously making me rethink!! Email has become so ubquitous and if you loose it; you feel like being handicapped.. Perhaps one should have a fault tolerant service for something as important as EMAIL.

So guys you can now email me back on gmail but I will be lot more cautious using it this time.

Gmail Down

My Gmail account is down from more than an hour.

I keep getting this message:

Server Error

We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem -- please try logging in to your account in a few minutes.

I have never experienced such outrage!! And my friends are able to login, it's just that I am experiencing this trouble. I used to forward my emails from other accounts onto GMail but now I am having second thoughts about it....

GMail is a great service but if it doesn't work - it's of no use...

Sunil & Tina

It's been more than a month since I got married with my beautiful wife Tina. Ever since I met her, it's been a new phase and a new beginning. I met her none other than independence day (15th August) to perhaps loose my independence :-)

So how long did it took to decide?? Days, weeks, months .. hmmm - not even couple of hours... we decided (actually God knows who decided) to tie the knot. Quite unusual for love marriages and perhaps even for arranged marriages these days in Delhi.

From 16th August, our Roka to 23rd September to our engagement and finally 29th September, time just flew by.

I haven't written blogs for days, marriage makes you busy man!! Had a beautiful honeymoon in austria, met some old pals in Salzburg, we had our first Karvachauth, had a great Diwali at my home in Patiala and currently enjoying my first few moments of happy married life :-) Lots of dinners at lots of places, gives enough reason to put up weight !!

I guess it gave me enough reasons to be away from the online world!

Enjoy the marriage video below..

LinknSurf Beta 1.0

Do checkout the latest version of LinknSurf Beta 1.0


- Enables you track your favorite blogs
- Share blogs via email, sms
- Share blogs via creating your own mobile communities

You can also recieve emails on LinknSurf, just forward your emails to username@linknsurf.com

LinknSurf now runs also on blackberry, so if you have Blackberry 7100G, you can enjoy tracking blogs and sharing them with your friends.

Download LinknSurf from the following links:
General MIDP2 Application (Nokia, SonyEricsson, LG, Samsung etc.)
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Motorola Razr V3
linknsurf-moto.jar
linknsurf-moto.jad
Blackberry 7100G
linknsurf.cod

Or just point your mobile browser to http://linknsurf.com/download

So if you have a gprs connection, you can try the app out and can email me your feedback!

MomoDelhi Flashback

On 5th August, we had Mobile Monday Delhi chapter kick off and the first meet went off very well. We had people from all walks of life - mobile enthusiasts, NGOs, venture capitalists, mobile carriers, content developers, content aggregators, entrepreneurs, students,.... - so what more could you expect! It was a charged audience - around 90 people turned up!!

The meeting kick started at 10 with everyone giving a brief overview of themselves and one killer feature they would want in their mobile phone. After that we had an enlightening talk by Mr. Naresh Gupta - VP Adobe, Managing Director India. His take was SMS and Voice are the two killer applications and perhaps Location based Services might be the next - but wait and see...

And then we had a series of talks till lunch:
- Nishant Kavi from iGate presented their solution for content adaptation on mobiles, gave a demo.
- Lomesh Dutta from Wirkle Inc. gave a presentation on LinknSurf - product focussed for building community around media.
- Prerna Gupta - cofounder Yaari.com gave a presentation on Social Networking on Mobiles via SMS... I was surprised to see my name appearing in her demo :-) Sometime back I got an invite for Yaari.com and just made a brief profile.. Didn't give me stardom but may be one day :-)
- Rajan presented his thoughts on Mobile 2.0

And after that we broke up for lunch.

After lunch we had two parallel sessions:
Track one had the following presentations:
- Saurabh Jain presented his talk about Convergence in mobile world..
- Nimesh Bhandari from ValueFirst gave a talk on Business Model Innovation in Value Added Services
- And then it was my turn , and I gave a talk on Mobile 2.0 - I guess I asked too many questions trying to analyze what's mobile 2.0 :-) But got a great response from the audience.
- Mr Chirag Jain, VP Webaroo, gave a talk describing Webaroo's offline search solution.
- Milind Nimesh gave a talk on Pervasive Computing..


Track two had the following presentations:
- Kunal Bajaj gave a talk on Telecom policy
- Joshua and Ashok Datar from Koolpool talked about their SMS based solutions for car pooling in Mumbai
- Sunadini and Ekta from ACL Wireless gave a talk on Usability on Small Screens
- Girish gave a talk on tools for mobile development

And finally we had an open panel session. The panelists include:
- Mr Manoj Dawane - COO Airtel
- Mr Alok Mittal - Partner Cannan Partners, Band of Angels
- Mr Vish Bajaj, CEO ValueFirst
- Mr Kiranbir Nag, Silicon Valley Bank
- Mr Arvind Jha - VP Monsoon Multimedia
- Mr Chirag Jain - VP Webaroo

The star attraction of the panel, atleast from my perspective, was Mr Manoj Dawane. Even though I have been against the walled garden approach of the carrier, but the way Mr Dawane handled all the queries and presented his perspective, all hats to the man..

I missed completely the track two of presentations and even with other presentations, I was quite occupied with getting things streamlined - always happen when you are part of the organizing team.. But nonetheless we have been able to capture some of the videos and we will be uploading them to youtube..

Presentations will be uploaded onto the wiki, so be sure to check http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

Just posting down a pic of me and lomesh captured by Prashant. It was captured at the very end of the event, I was really exhausted....


Me and Lomesh

You can see other pics at flickr.

Mobile Monday Delhi

Finally Mobile Monday Delhi is on the rolls.. We are having the first meet of the delhi chapter of the mobile monday event on 5th August 2006 at Adobe's office in Noida.

Mobile Monday is a gathering of mobile enthusiasts, developers, carriers, VAS providers, VC's - anyone who is enthusiastic about the next digital revolution - Mobile!

So if you are in and around Delhi or may be far away, Mobile Monday is a must visit. We would like the initiative to carry on every month where people can meet, discuss and share their ideas, beliefs and technology. Adobe has been very kind to sponsor its conference hall and lunch facilities. It has taken over all the headache in arranging the event..

You can find details at http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com/

This mobile monday is unique in the sense that it's being held on Saturday,!! Yeah 5th August is Saturday and not Monday!!

Mobile Monday on Saturday - not many can chew it. So why not mobile saturday ? I guess mobile monday has an active community around it, secondly in indian context arranging on saturday makes more sense. In India, tech community mainly works quite late in offices and asking them to keep their Monday evening free looks hard. Companies have problem sponsoring the event on weekdays. So we thought why not do it on Saturday! I guess its an experiment and like any experiment we would learn and make the necessary corrections but at the end we would like to have an active community keep going on.

Details of Event are given Below:

Mobile Monday Delhi : “Mobile 2.0: Future Trends and Technology”

When?

05 August 2006 ( Mark your calendar ,it’s a Saturday)

Where?

Adobe Systems India Private Limited
Adobe Towers
I-1A, City Centre, Sector : 25A
Noida - 201301
Tel # 91-120-2444711

Want to participate ?? Register yourself at our wiki !!

http://momodelhi.pbwiki.com

To keep you updated on latest developments Pre and Post event Please join our mailing list .

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/momodelhi/

Startups and Team members

I came back to India in September 2004 and from then I have been involved in setting up Wirkle with my colleagues. We are still an early stage company but have passed through different phases. From our initial half room office (3 people could barely fit in) to a bedroom and finally towards our current office, life has never been the same.

But this post is not about me or co-founders, this is about experiences of a team and its comparison across the borders. The experience I share is not yet mine but includes lot of my other friends who have been running their own startups from a while.

While everyone agrees the thing that makes a startup different is the team. VC's might call it a proven team with serial entrepreneurs, past experiences but my take is - at the end of the day its the developer's game. Well proven management teams can fail if the product/service is not just compelling enough. I am not undermining the role of management but both are equally important.

Though most of the initial startup team is technical, given today's circumstances its hard to get and manage high thrill enthusiastic startup teams. Any people who join startups should realize:

- Persistence: Startups take their time to become companies. No quick returns. Have patience and persistence.

- Fun/Hectic: It can be fun to work in a startup, at the same time it can be quite hectic. Tight deadlines, too much work pressure - only hard work pays. If you want a cool 9-5 job, startups are not perhaps your cup of tea.

- Responsibility: Work in a team but be personally responsibile for your work. Realize the importance of deadlines.

- Professional: Programming is not just about writing new code. Aim is not just to code but to develop a product/service. Build a finished product. And when a user gives great comments on your product, that's your greatest achievement.

- Domain experts: If you are working in a particular domain, try to be an expert in that. In India, I have seen people hop a lot amongst different technologies but no one ever tries to be an expert. Secondly, no one can make you an expert, you have to be the master of your own destiny.

- Insecurity: Finally don't feel insecure. Even if startups fail, you are going to win at the end. See my earlier post: Is joining Startup really a RISK?

For guys who join startups because of money :

I remember interviewing a candidate with around 8-9 months work experience. He was getting a package of around 3.3 - 3.5 lakhs. And I asked about what kind of renumeration package he is looking for? His answer was: After 2-3 months, I will get a bonus and my package will become 4.3-4.5 and if I join another company I might get 5 and since you are a startup, I am expecting around 6 lakhs. This kind of behaviour is totally ridiculous on part of the candidate, if he wants to join a startup.

I and most of my friends have had experience working abroad and then setting up a team in India. One of the contrasts that we all have seen is people aren't professional enough. Perhaps we ourselves weren't professional enough when we graduated but the environment changed us. It's very important for every team member in a startup to realize , at the end of the day what counts is professionalism. Will you use a broken television set or read a local magazine or buy sub-standard products ? If you yourself aren't going to do that why will someone else use/buy the product/service that you are developing if it has concerns. Be professional in whatever code you develop or debug. And if it implies, as some call it "dirty work" (testing and debugging), you are personally responsible to do it.

You will grow and mature much faster in a starup. So even if it appears to be a risky venture, that risk will pay off. Have fun!

Busy Busy Busy!!

Last few days had been quite hectic. We all at Wirkle had been quite busy from participating in a candle light procession against reservation at AIIMS to writing software code to releasing new version of LinkNSurf. Life has never been the same from the time when we all started the entrepreneurial journey.

Do checkout the new version of LinkNSurf, atleast guys that don't have a mobile phone can checkout the website! We have done a complete makeover of the website and will be putting up new things much faster.

With LinkNSurf you can TRACK and SHARE your favorite:

• Blogs (MySpace, Xanga, Blogspot,LiveJournal,TextAmerica, MSN Spaces),
• MySpace profile comments,
• Flickr Photos,
• Hot or Not, Sports, Movie Reviews, Celebrity Gossip, News and content from hundreds of other web sources.

MIDP2 jar and jad files are available here.
linknsurf.jar
linknsurf.jad
Looking forward for a feedback from all the audience out there.

Flickr photos - reservation policies

I have started uploading photos related to anti reservation demonstrations currently on my flickr account.

Please check out the account at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/30095434@N00/
Link
If anyone wants to contribute any pictures, please do email me at sunilgoyal (at) gmail (dot) com.

You can also subscribe to the Flickr RSS feed here.

OBC Reservations: An IIT Faculty Member's View

I am here quoting the views of Prof. M Balakrishnan, a computer science professor at IIT Delhi. You can get the details at the iit4equality yahoo group.

Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to
announce that majority of its population is backward and does not
have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along
with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste
groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to
begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as
a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that
is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering
and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested
in even consulting the people who have built these Institutions and
brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of
reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the
issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long
association, I can claim to know something. Many of these arguments
may be applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical and
management disciplines as well.

Today IITs are considered excellent educational institutions. There
is a countrywide scramble to get into these with many students
spending the best part of their teen years in preparing for its
entrance examinations. This should not be confused with ranking of
universities where just a couple of IITs make it in the top 500.
These rankings deal primarily with the research output and not with
the quality of undergraduate education. I can confidently say that
any ranking of quality of undergraduate engineers produced would put
IITs in the top 20 worldwide if not in the top 10. And it is this
achievement that is going to be hard to maintain with the proposed
reservations policy. Before we go any further, it would be best to
examine how this excellence has been achieved.

The fundamental contribution that the Central Government has made to
these institutions is in generous funding (by Indian, not global
standards) combined with unmatched autonomy. The main point of
engagement between the Government and these Institutions has been
through the appointment of Directors. Except for a brief period
during the last administration, the Governments had refrained from
any major politicking in these appointments. They have by and large
appointed the best available applicant Professor from the same or
another IIT for the job. These venerable people had themselves a
great pride in these Institutions and have ran the Institutes with
the best of their abilities (maybe not always efficiently but always
fairly) without major vested interest.

For someone outside IITs to understand the power of this position is
not easy. The Director virtually appoints the complete senior
administration including the deputy directors and deans, chairs all
the faculty selections including that for the Professors, is the
chairman of the senate and thus the academic head, is the financial
head and also the administrative head. For most people living in the
campus, which includes 90% of faculty and students, he is also the
chairman of the local municipality (all major complaints on water,
electricity, sewage etc. would reach him). This ensures that the
buck almost always stops with him and thus decision making is
unavoidable. This autonomy that has been the hallmark of these
institutions is being eroded. There were attempts in the last
Government (fortunately not vigorously pursued) to tell IITs what to
teach. The present decision would strike at the fundamentals of IITs
as the Government no longer feels whom to teach and how many to
teach is best decided by these Institutions themselves. This in my
opinion is the most dangerous fallout as it strikes at the very core
of the success of these Institutions. Once the lines of control gets
blurred, there would be no stopping, as today's political
functioning is clearly not dictated by long term vision. Soon we
could have reservations in faculty and create a caste based
patronage system which has destroyed many of the once excellent
state universities.

In IITs, the faculty selected and promoted solely based on merit has
maintained a high standard of ethical behavior, have taken their
teaching and research seriously, refrained from politicking
themselves and supported the Institute in many ways to fulfill its
commitments. Who are these faculty members? A large number are our
own alumni (undergraduates as well as postgraduates), majority of
them have studied or conducted research in the west and almost all
of them have had opportunities of pursuing financially much more
lucrative careers in India and abroad. Thus each faculty member is
here by choice and he/she has exercised that choice with one major
attraction - opportunity to teach, interact and work with extremely
bright students perhaps unmatched anywhere. It is this attraction
that is being tampered with. In a situation where all IITs are short
of faculty and desperately trying to innovate to attract faculty
under the constraints of the pay commission dictated salaries (while
competing with Sensex based salaries), this is not a pleasant
development.

IITs have had reservations for SC/STs for decades. Why would this be
different? Aren't these students likely to be better prepared than
the students admitted under the existing reserved category? Here I
would like to share some of the facts with the readers. IITs have
been admitting SC/ST students for years under two modes. From the
general category, a significantly lower JEE cutoff is decided and
reserved category students scoring above this cutoff are admitted
directly to the UG programmes. Another still lower cutoff is decided
and reserved category students from this set are admitted to a one
year preparatory course conducted by IITs themselves. After passing
this course, they can join the programmes without having to appear
in JEE again. Even this exercise collectively yields less than 15%
in IIT Delhi though the quota amounts to nearly 22.5%. Half of the
reserved category students manage to clear courses comfortably while
the other half struggle on the margins. What would be called a good
performance (cumulative grade point average or CGPA of 8 and above)
and is achieved by nearly forty percent of general category
students, is rare and occurs once in many years among the reserved
category students. It is not that all general category students do
well. There is nearly a 5% "dropout" rate even among them which is a
cause of concern but mainly attributed to the burnout due to JEE
preparation phase. The "dropout" students have no effect on teaching
as they neither are regular nor make their presence felt in classes.
The remaining part of weak students is too small and at present
hardly any instructor would pitch his / her course at that level. On
the other hand, the present policy may introduce a large band of
weak students which no instructor can ignore. This would definitely
result in drop in the quality of education. It is the hypocrisy of
the highest order that on one hand the reservation for SC/STs is
considered a success and quoted for extension to OBCs, and on the
other hand, no hard data on the performance of these students is
available in the public domain. Some administrators I talked to
consider this data as sensitive! Analysis of where the reserved
category students go after graduation would be enlightening. I do
not have the sensitive data but my experience shows that most of
them either go to services like IAS/IES or to the public sector
companies. Normally this choice of careers by IIT graduates should
be a matter of satisfaction except that both these entries are again
using the reservation quota. Is it empowerment or crutches for life?

In this whole episode, the most stunning news for me was when the
Hon'ble minister announced increase in intake to compensate for the
reservations. This would amount to nearly 56% overall increase in
undergraduate intake in the IITs. This showed complete ignorance of
what makes IIT undergraduate education tick. There are few
Institutions in the world where undergraduate students get to
interact one to one and so freely with such high-caliber faculty.
Students are advised on courses in small groups, interact over
hostel dinners, go on industrial trips and finally carry out a well
supervised project. Every undergraduate student does an
intensive "novel" project either individually or in groups of two
and he/she is effectively "supervised" by a faculty member. Many of
them result in publications. This system evolved when the student-
faculty ratio was 6:1 and is getting strained at the seams when it
has reached 12:1. In some disciplines like Computer Sciences and
Electrical Engineering where market competition is heavy, it has
already gone to 20:1 and above. Though currently producing excellent
results, it is a highly non-scalable mechanism. Intake increase on
this scale, when effectively faculty strengths in key areas are
decreasing could sound a death-knell to one of our few international
brand names.

I have a poser for Prof. Jayati Ghosh, my well renowned colleague
from JNU and a member of the knowledge commission. She has justified
reservations in IITs based on the poor ranking of IITs
internationally. Her argument is anyway these Institutions are not
great, why they should crib about the quality of intake. She nowhere
states that any of the 400+ odd Institutions worldwide which are
ranked above IITs have achieved their status through reservations.
In that case all Tamil Nadu Engineering Colleges with 69%
reservation for decades (openly defying the Supreme Court suggested
norm of 50%) now should be at the top.

Postscript: Finally, I would like to seek opinion on the composition
of our next Olympics team. We have admittedly done much poorer in
sports than education. Should our next Olympics team be chosen on
caste basis or perhaps with adequate representation to athletes
aged 40+ who are at present completely unrepresented? After all we
do not have much to lose as we only win one bronze medal in
alternate Olympics. I would no longer be surprised if some future
Sports Minister considers caste based quotas for our national
cricket team. After all that would be worth a few votes and the
nation would have been well prepared by then to cheer only for its
own caste brethren!

The author is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT
Delhi. He has been with IIT Delhi since 1977 except for a three year
stint outside India. Currently he is on Sabbatical and working with
a startup. The views represented here are completely his own.
M. Balakrishnan (mbala@...)
5, Taxila Apartments
IIT Delhi Campus,
New Delhi - 110016

Nehru's Views on Reservation

Came across an interesting article expressing Nehru's views on the issue of reservations.



Link
Some excerpts:
".. help should be given on economic considerations and not on caste."

"They deserve help but even so I dislike any kind of reservation, more particularly in service. I react strongly aganist anything which leads to inefficiency and second rate standards. I want my country to be a first class country in everything."

"Let us help the backward castes by all means, but never at the cost of efficiency."

And now hear any pro reservation speaker. They don't have any dharam imaan. It's an easy way for them to get votes. Be a statesman otherwise this country would die its own death.

India stands for Equality or Inequality?

From past few days I have been following the reservation discussion on internet, newspapers and television. Have been listening to the pro-reservation lobby remarks; politicans are just making mockery of whatever good exists in this country.

Sometimes I doubt my indianness. Is this the country I feel so proud of? For what? I came from Austria to India, thinking I would do some good work in India. I want to see my country being one of the best nations in the world - and will this caste politics lead us anywhere?

I am not against reservations, India needs to bring economically weaker societies back into mainstream in order to seriously progress, but the way government is implementing the reservation policy is fundamentally wrong. Hadn't supreme court put up an upper cap on reservation of 50%, the politicans could have gone to any extent. They amend the constitution to suit their own needs. Is this the same constitution - I feel proud of - which provides social justice to all indians irrespective of their caste and creed!

This is what happens to the best and meritorious students in India:




If your heart doesn't cry, whose else would?

And the biggest agony to me, not even a single mainstream politican or a personality has come to the cause and support of anti-reservation lobby. This battle is not about reserving thousands of seats here and there, fundamentally the government is dividing the country which in principle is wrong.

Is something like "Rang De Basanti" is a solution? I don't think so. But I don't know what's the solution? Any views!!!

Mobile Customer Woes

I do have a mobile connection from IDEA Cellular and have other connections from Airtel, Hutch. At times I feel, carriers keep doing stuff to angry their customers and its not just one carrier does, this phenomenon is same across all carriers.

If sending arbitirary SMSes to promote ringtones doesn't end, these guys have started the process of automated voice calls. You get a ring, you pick up your phone - just to hear an automated voice call describing you a new service and then you feel like killing all these mobile operator guys.

And then lot of sales calls - from credit card, loans and from mobile operator representatives themselves trying to get hold of consumers from other operators. I have recieved lot of calls from Hutch, Airtel representatives in the past asking me to switch plans.

Just last week I got a call from Idea Customer care asking me to subscribe to SMS alerts (aap apna rasshefal dekh sakte hain, jokes, news etc.) for 1 rupee per day. And when I asked how many sms will you send - he joyingly said 5 - as if I was going to love it! In case there has been service in order not to recieve any arbitirary sms, I would have preferred that instead. Idea cellular almost daily sends me a wap push sms and then at times 2 or 3 more messages either for ringtones or their service has improved in this area.

I love the idea of alerts but what I don't like is an operator just banging them on my head over and over again.

Last week I recieved another call (you see I recieve so many calls!!) from customer care to subscribe to caller tones and that too for "FREE". That's how they sell. I told them I just don't want the service, not even if you pay me for that. But that annoying guy put an annoying caller tone on my mobile and now I am fighting another battle with customer care of Idea to get this off my phone.

It's been 4 days and 3 calls to customer care - they haven't yet put it off. They just have one response - chinta mat keejiye (don't worry). Within 24 hours your problem will be rectified. And 24 hours pass and still no activity. More than the customer care representative, it's the fault of the company and its policies.

At times when I travel from Delhi to Patiala, my phone keeps beeping every once and often? Can you guess why? As I move from Delhi to Patiala, I pass over 3 different states with different carriers and different carriers keep sending my SMSes that I have reached their network.

Perhaps carriers have so many free SMSes, not sure if any PIL been ever filed against them for this unscrupulous behaviour!

Global News Brands

Got to know some stats about online news organizations from Fred's blog .

New York times - 74 million unique visitors per month
Yahoo News - 67 million unique visitors per month
The Weather Channel - 44 million unique visitors per month
MSNBC and CNN - 36 million (BBC perhaps also at the same level) unique visitors per month
India Times at 22 million unique visitors per month
Sankei and Asahi at roughly 15 million unique visitors per month

Given low internet penetration rates, indiatimes still figures as a major player. Though currently most of the hits might be coming from the indian audience living abroad, but I guess as the internet penetration increases in India, IndiaTimes might exceed NYTimes. It's only a matter of when!!

Just a word to IndiaTimes, most people find the IndiaTimes,(TimesofIndia) website to be wary and at times if not hate, dislike it (there is just no other good alternative). There is just either too much clutter or meaningless advertisements. Just give your website a human touch!

Mandal II - Why?

I still have very vivid memories of what happened during the VP government rule during the Mandal Commission crisis, though I never understood why that happened. I was still in school in my 6th or 7th standard and was too young to understand the consequences of such an act. First time I had heard young students burning themselves live and first time the word RESERVATION.

It was our mid semester exams and a group of students from local university came inside our school exam room and asked us to shout "Mandal commission murdabad". I don't know how come the school authorities allowed them (school authorities do had troubles managing the mob and we had even later police deployed at the compound) but our teachers also insisted to say one or two times so that the mob can then go back and we can safely pursue our exams.

And then for next 1-2 months it was holiday time, every one or two days we used to go and check if school would reopen. I was not an avid reader and did not quite understand what was it all about and with time I forgot about what all that happened.

Today after having gone through the entrance examination route, having an IIT degree, having spent around 3 years in Austria, and now trying to build a product company in India, I am seeing the same stories in newspapers again. Any my heart and my mind questions my soul - why - why again? Haven't we learn't any lessons from the past ?

I am not against doing quotas or reservation but to what extent ? In school I had friends from all castes and I myself never knew what SC/ST actually meant? Had we had the same quotas for getting admission in school, the fact that something like this exists would have created more hatredness amongst various communities.

IIT's have maintained a good standard in providing education irrespective of the quota system. We do had colleagues from the SC/ST category but at times they excelled and scored more marks and others appreciated it. Teachers to my knowledge had never been impartial in giving marks. And the IIT system that one has to clear degree maximum in 6 years or providing a preparatory 1 year course to weak SC/ST students has never affected the high education standards set up by them.

But moving from 25% to a reservation of 49.5%, is that justified even if IIT's maintain that standard of education? Students burn their midnight oil - studying at times 14-16 hours a day and their parents spend an equivalent amount of time guiding them. Visit any IIT- JEE examination center, the day IIT entrance exam is held, one can see the worries of the parents and their concern about their student's future career.

Are we as humans justified in making policies that puts reservations/quotas above excellence and that too of young minds who have yet to start a career and experience life?

The aim of reservation was to make weaker socities economically stronger, so where is the economic justification to reservation? If politicians want to do a 49.5% reservation, I would ask them to add a clause along - Annual income of all those people who want to file a reservation seat should have an annual income below 1 lakh or 2 lakh. Economically a SC/ST family earning 2 lakhs as annual income should be at par with a general category family earning the same amount. So opportunities for kids for both families should be same. But politicians won't do it, it's another issue , it's another day for them!

Tie Group Mentoring Session

Today I was at Tie Group Mentoring Session. The session was an open discussion forum with queries answered by two panelists: Mohit Goyal (co-founder IIS Infotech) and Pradeep Gupta (founded Cybermedia).

My overview of the session is:
- Money is not a constraint to seed fund the venture. People have been putting their own seed funds to venture out.
- What people seriously lack is advice and guidance.
- Lot of people had already built small successful businesses but they don't know how to scale them up and move to the next level.
- Lack of networking opportunities in India - how do you reach relevant people? - not many online/offline forums.
- Building a team who can pull apart.

Panelists asked entrepreneurs to join ENP Program (Entrepreneurship Nurtuting Program of TiE). So I am going to join now and figure out how much it helps.

And also met some pals, old and new. Gave a demo of LinkNSurf to a few people. And found out Wirkle was mentioned in the Band of Angels article. Quite a surprise, so google provided me the answer.

There's been a huge revival in angel investing over the last six to 12 months, especially in the areas of mobile telephony and convergence," says Vish Akela, a Silicon Valley-returnee, who is now funding a handful of budding entrepreneurs like 26-year-old IIT Delhi-grad Varun Khurana's Wirkle, a mobile entertainment company.

Checkout the complete article here.

Vision, Technology and Consumer

Its been around two months since we launched an alpha version of LinkNSurf. These two months have made me realize what it takes to run a consumer focussed startup and what's the difference between vision, technology and a consumer!

If not all atleast some of the startups start with some vision and then work towards it. Technologists try to put the best use of technology and write up some very complicated piece of software. But in the end, it all boils down to weather a consumer needs that piece of software! What specific need your vision and technology fulfills for your consumer?

An online busines needs lot of iterations and one has to adapt quickly. A startup is always constrained and it has to always keep on doing lot of trials and incorporate user feedback. What is more harder in an online business is to specifically identify a target audience and fulfill the need for your target audience. At times your vision would exactly match and at times it would deviate. One has to rethink the basic assumptions at every stage. And at times one would think how could I make such a mistake in the past! But it's all a part of what a startup is. Providing and improving product, improving technology are all easier stuff but actually identifying a business need of a consumer can be much harder, especially for the technologists.

At LinkNSurf we are now exactly trying to solve this problem. We are now having release cycles every 10 days, each release is not about getting new small features done but its about improving usability, its about a user finding a value in the product.

Startups are not just about identifying problems but its about solving them. Business problems can be real hard, but solving them is the thrill. Lot of people appreciate great vision and great technology, but that doesn't build a business out. At the end it's a consumer that builds a business so start talking to your consumer from day one!

LinkNSurf - What it means?

Recently we at Wirkle, released a mobile social networking application called LinkNSurf. LinkNSurf drives its meaning from the words "Link" and "Surf". The idea is to link people and use that network as a social recommendation for content such as blogs, RSS feeds etc.

Every social network e.g. Orkut, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. has a certain aim, has a particular purpose with which it gears around its users. In case of LinkNSurf, we are building a viral network where users can discover what public events their peers are doing and use it as a social recommendation of content for them.

We believe that there are primarily two ways by which an average consumer gets relevant content - one is search engines and second is its peers - apart from million others like advertising etc. A recommendation that a friend gives at times plays a far important role as compared to traditional search. It's not to imply that search engines are not relevant but the key is - social network when integrated in the online world can have more powerful repercussions. Flickr has revolutionized the photo album world and Delicious has made a big impact in managing bookmarks.

And why on mobile? The mobile world is much more fragmented then the online world. It might be much easier to find and get content on a PC but on mobile, doing search is a lot cumbersome. Secondly, Blogs and User generated content have become the mainstream mechanisms to generate content. With millions of new devices reaching millions of people, individuals/groups will create and consume more user-generated content. We believe what we need is a seamless environment that provides an easier way to discover such content, consume such content and share it easily.

And if this is what you also believe in, do checkout LinkNSurf. It will be great to hear your feedback.

Rang De Basanti

Rang De Basanti - I just saw this move yesterday. Like all other Amir Khan movies, this is unconventional in style. But this movie is not about Lagaan's Bhuvan but a group of youngsters, college going lads, living their life with full vigor and asking us to rise, stand up and lead the country.

This movie made me remember a particular real life incident. At the end of the movie, there was a paricular shot where people are asking questions on the radio why these youngsters killed the defence minister and the very first remark was - you did a brilliant job, all politicians should be made to stand in a line and be shot down.

Now remember the Indian Parliament Attack in 2001, I was in IIT that time and travelling in train from my home town towards New Delhi. Just when the train arrived at the old delhi railway station, the news of the parliament attack became apparent. And you know - what did the average indian talked about in train? The response was exactly the same. Someone at my back said, if atleast some of the politicians would have been killed, they would have learn't some lesson.

This is what the average normal indian thinks about indian politicians. We the better educated might differ, but will there be something that is going to change India and the Indians?

Link'n'Surf

Link'n'Surf - the product that we all have been building at Wirkle, is now ready for its Alpha launch. Link'n'Surf builds a social network around media such as user-generated content and makes it available 24X7 while you are on the move on to your mobile device.

And yeah, we also have a Link'n'Surf Buddy, you can check what all she writes as she pokes around every good or bad corner of Wirkle.

Looking at my resume, lot of people often ask me - why did you do a startup in mobile space? And there's just one answer - fascination and a strong belief!

I remember the days when SMS first arrived in India and people said SMS is crap - limited keys , limited text and what's the use; and something in me said - it's going to be powerful. And then the days when I bought this expensive little device so that I can be the first one amongst my colleagues to buy a colored screen mobile handset and on the way back home, while tinkering with the device I missed my bus stop by limits. It took me an hour to reach back home that cold chilly winter night. And yeah I felt a lot happier when I saw my father using SMS though my efforts of teaching him to email have already failed. I can count a lot of such short experiences and on every such occassion there was always a feeling that there is something more that we can do with mobiles.

Another important influence in my life and in lot others I guess has been the Internet. Most people think of internet as either websites, content or network. I regard internet to be synonymous with "people and information" and the way it has socially transformed all of us. This social transformation - this is what is the real power of internet and this is the power that needs to be brought on to the mobile device. Mobiles today are communication devices and they would become one day information superhighways and transform everything around us.

And this one dream one way or the other led to the start of Wirkle and Link'n'Surf.

As we move ahead in this journey, we all at Wirkle look forward to your valuable feedback, suggestions, advice and criticisms.

India Mobile Data Cost Trends

I have been always a bit apprehensive in terms of weather India can make a mark in terms of data growth in the mobile segment. Cost of GPRS used to be a major bottleneck.
In US, the unlimited GPRS charges vary from around $20 - $25 per month. And in India the charges are around Rs 500 per month ($11-12). The cost is huge for both markets.

But recently I came to know that companies like Airtel do offer unlimited GPRS package for just Rs 99 per month ($2-3 approx.) for corporate plans (companies that offer their employees corporate mobile connections). I think that's a very positive trend and will help in boosting mobile data usage.

One another stuff that's going positive is that atleast Airtel has automated the process of doing settings for GPRS. Last week, I changed my sim card in multiple handsets, and I got sms with the GPRS settings automatically. Six months back I had to call customer care everytime I wanted GPRS connection on a new handset or do a manual sms to get the settings.

I will look forward to the day when GPRS is supported free of cost with every mobile sim card (the cost is included in the carrier's standard package) and the carrier can still make money by providing services based on GPRS.

Social Networking - Is it Wildfire?

Got to know these latest numbers about the growth of social networking sites from this link.

MySpace.com
Nov. 2004: 4.9 million
Nov. 2005: 26.7 million

Facebook.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 11.1 million

Xanga.com
Nov. 2004: 5.8 million
Nov. 2005: 7.9 million

Bebo.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million

Friendster.com
Nov. 2004: 966,000
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million

Tribe Networks Inc.
Nov. 2004: 62,000
Nov. 2005: 515,000

Linkedin.com
Nov. 2004: 123,000
Nov. 2005: 354,188

Orkut.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 83,000

Source: comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks, Inc.

MySpace has now reached 47.3 million members and growing at 160,000 members per day!!
If this isn't wildfire, than what's more?

Even lot of indian youngsters (including some of my friends) are spending hours at social networking sites like Orkut, Hi5 and the others. And today I came to know about an interesting fact from one of my office colleagues. His friends are apparently using Orkut much more than their yahoo messengers! Surprised!

Beat these young indian software engineers who are now using sites like Orkut much more, as their companies have blocked access to yahoo messengers!!!

Necessity is the mother of Invention

An old quote but very much true. Necessity drives invention. I have often wondered what makes great products, and more than that - what drives great entrepreneurs to make great products. It's like the whole world is doing one thing and then suddenly something out of the blue comes and changes the whole world!

Is it an individual's own perception or is it a team effect or an ecosystem that leads to the development of great products. More then the market demand I think its an individual's own belief that leads to great products and most of the times its like an individual feels a need for something and he just creates it unknowingly without realizing that product or service would be useful to a lot others.

I haven't had the experience building a great product or haven't been in the company of such people but I have always been motivated by people who had been doing ground breaking innovations (mostly the ones that have a huge social impact on common people).

Every small step you take leads into this direction one way or the other.

Earlier I had a short experience where in my last job at Salzburg Research, just out of frusturation (unable to find any good tool for visualizing RDF) I started building a tool for visualizing RDF (RDF Gravity) on a nice Friday evening. And by sunday evening, within just two days I gave a small demo to my head, even though he liked it but I didn't heard the WOW effect. And that gave me enough food to keep on going. And then soon one of my brilliant colleagues Rupert joined in and we both kept on building it at nights and on the weekends. After a while the tool became atleast internally quite useful and then was later made available for general use. I hope it has been useful if not thousand but to atleast a few hundred people.

Looking into the past it seems quite fascinating how one small thing leads to another small thing.

Currently in my current venture, WIRKLE, we are trying to bring people and information together on the mobile world. Wirle has seen tremendous changes, from idea to implementation, life has been quite dynamic - but I guess that's a part of the startup. Even Wirkle grew out of dicussions where me and my friends got together and thought to pursue this startup. I have always been motivated by how a small digital device like mobile phone is used by people in lot different ways. I get fascinated when my father who is a PC novice, uses SMS to bid for auctions.

Right from our IIT times, we have been quite fascinated by people who have built great companies. Even during IIT we tried to do a starup that failed with the dot com burst, but that experience gave us our first entry into the real world. And this time we have been fully committed to keep moving on irrespective of any hurdles that come through.

Till now it has been a great experience and I look forward to the future with a much greater anticipation.

Keep Moving Ahead

Got this nice poem from here .

Lehron se darkar nauka par nahin hoti,koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti,
Nanhi cheenti jab daana lekar chalti hai,chadhti deewaron par, sau bar phisalti hai.
Man ka vishwas ragon mein saahas bharta hai,chadhkar girna, girkar chadhna na akharta hai.
Akhir uski mehnat bekar nahin hoti,koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti.

Dubkiyan sindhu mein gotakhor lagata hai,ja ja kar khali haath lautkar aata hai.Milte nahi sahaj hi moti gehre paani mein,badhta dugna utsah isi hairani mein.
Muthi uski khali har bar nahin hoti,Koshish karne walon ki haar nahi hoti.
Asaflta ek chunauti hai, ise sweekar karo,kya kami reh gayi, dekho aur sudhar karo.

Jab tak na safal ho, neend chain ki tyago tum,Sangharsh ka maidan chhodkar mat bhago tum.Kuch kiye bina hi jai jaikar nahin hoti,koshish karne walon ki haar nahin hoti.

-Harivansh Rai Bachan

Startup's biggest Asset - its TEAM

A brilliant post on managing startup teams.

Just taking some exceprts and trying to analyze in Indian context:

For cash starved startups, having management and employees believing in the opportunity and team and being motivated by equity is key to success.
.....
I prefer the employee who will take less cash and a higher equity package.

In indian context, what one needs is hard cash and no equity. There would be very few people who would be willing to compensate a part of their salary with equity. I am yet to find one!

In terms of bonuses, I am not a huge fan of cash bonuses for companies losing money, especially in the early stages of development. As a company matures and hires additional executive talent cash bonuses become more important to retain top level executives. With respect to bonuses, there are no guaranteed bonuses, only performance-based ones.

Bonuses are just considered to be a delayed part of the salary, but its considered to be just there.

A Players like to work with other A Players. To the extent that you have a strong team and every hire is better than the next, I can guarantee that you will attract some great talent. A Players like to learn from other A Players and like to know that when their backs are against the wall, they have other team members with the experience and know-how to persevere.

The above perhaps holds to a certain extent but not always. Having A players around delays your next job change but given a more cash rich opportunity people just jump.

Startup culture has just started in India (my friends are involved in 4 different startups at this moment), an ecosystem , success stories are yet to become a sole part. Once that starts, there will be no stopping point. Passionate people are bound to make a mark!